How many hours should a junior player practice?

I changed my mind about this.

For years I believed that more hours was better. That the player who put in the most work would come out ahead, and that if two juniors had the same talent, the one on court longer would win. I do not believe that anymore. What follows is the number I use now, and the working behind it, so you can check it instead of trusting me.

The answer first

Ten to twelve high quality hours on court per week, averaged across a year.

That is for a sixteen to eighteen year old. If you came here for a number, that is the number. The rest of this explains where it comes from, because a number you cannot defend is worth nothing.

Start from the end

The way to get this right is to work backwards from the professional week, not forwards from what a keen twelve year old can absorb.

At the highest level, the goal is about fifteen hours a week. Not because someone decided fifteen was optimal, but because that is what the sport allows.

Here is the practice desk at a tournament. We are allowed to book one hour the day before, maybe one more outside prime time, and then on the day itself we can request another hour or two, depending on how busy the courts are. That is the ceiling. Practicing at a tournament makes it almost impossible to go past fifteen hours a week. There are matches, of course, which add to the volume, but on match days we do not practice much anyway, just a thirty minute warm up.

A tournament week is not the same as a preseason week or a practice block between events, and those run higher. But the average has to include everything: weeks off, weeks with an injury or a health problem, and weeks when the player simply goes on holiday and no tennis happens at all. Averaged across the year, fifteen holds.

So fifteen hours a week is not a junior target. It is the finish line, and it belongs to the best players in the world.

The ladder

If a player can add about seven percent to their weekly volume each year, and we work backwards from fifteen hours at twenty two, the ladder falls out on its own:

Which is where the ten to twelve comes from.

The table goes in steps of two years, so each step is seven percent compounded twice, roughly fifteen percent, not seven. Ten hours at sixteen becomes 10.7 at seventeen and about 11.5 at eighteen.

This is court time only. No fitness, no physio, no gym. Just good quality hours on court.

And hours are only half of it. Two players can both do eleven hours a week and be doing completely different things, because intensity is the other variable and it does not show up in any of these numbers. That is a separate discussion and I will come back to it.

Two players at the edges

I have coached a player who practiced eight hours a week on average and reached the top hundred in the world. I have also worked with players who did roughly twice that volume and arrived in the same place. I was not with them at the age I am writing about here. I came in later, which means I did not set those hours, I saw what was left after them.

Both of those are edges, and I am giving them as edges. The top hundred is reachable from either end, which tells you something important: the volume is not what decided it. The honest answer sits between them, which is where the ladder puts it.

The difference between the two ends is not the result. It is the risk. Nobody counts the players who did sixteen hours a week at seventeen and were finished before they got anywhere, because those players do not show up in anyone’s statistics. If the top hundred is reachable at eight, why push a junior to sixteen?

The question is what the right amount is. Not what the biggest amount is.

Why, and for what reason

The hours are individual, and the honest version of this article says so.

One hour of individual practice with your coach is not one hour in a group of four. If your child trains only individually, ten to twelve is probably too much and the real number is lower. If they are in squads and camps, spending time on court with a lot of other players, the raw number will be higher and it should be, because the density is lower.

This is where our sport is worst. We put everyone in one bag and shake that bag as hard as possible. Same volume, same drills, same expectations, and then we call the survivors talented.

Athleticism matters here too, and it is probably the closest thing we have to talent. At the younger ages a player with fewer hours can still be the better athlete and still be the better player, which is why hours alone never explain what you are watching.

There is compound progress in a career. Practicing for years, you accumulate experience from the court, you learn the tactical side, you learn how to travel efficiently, you learn how to handle stress. All of that adds up. But you are still a human being, and the body has a fixed amount of recovery it can pull off. Recovery does not compound. That is the whole problem in one sentence.

What to actually do with this

If you are a parent reading this and your sixteen year old is doing fourteen hours a week, you are not automatically doing damage. But you should be able to answer why, and for what reason. Not “because the academy schedule says so.”

The question goes back to you and the coach, and it has three possible answers, not one:

• Would adding hours actually bring better results?
• Would keeping the volume where it is be the better answer?
• Would reducing it be the better answer?

Look at what you are getting. Is the player improving, or just tired? Is the intensity going up while the hours stay flat, which is usually the right direction, or are you adding hours to a session that is already half serious? And is any of this survivable alongside school, because at sixteen to eighteen that is not a side issue, it is most of the week.

Ten to twelve hours. Then defend it.